In today’s Profile, Merics researcher Nis Gruenberg talks about a vision from 2004 of what the future might look like if China was an economic power – an abstract idea at the time. 18 years later, that vision is now taking shape. Politically, however, increasingly sharp lines of conflict are emerging in the wake of China’s growing significance. These have the potential to tear open wounds that could destroy global peace.
And yet, governments are doomed to work closely together in this constellation. Namely, when it comes to the fight against global warming. If the climate tips over the critical threshold, there will only be losers anyway. However, countries wait and see what price the others are willing to pay in the form of declining economic growth.
In China, this tactic has a special dimension because the government has to reconcile growth with environmental and climate protection more urgently than in other countries, as Nico Beckert reports. If growth is curbed too much, social divisions threaten the rule of the CP. If too much carbon continues to be blown into the air, the climate will heat up even more. Extreme weather such as heat waves, floods and droughts would deprive China of its livelihoods. Harvests would be endangered and protests could be expected because the government failed to protect the people from disaster.
The recent past has already shown that political stability takes precedence over climate protection in China. What this means for the world is only an abstract idea today. But we will probably have a much more concrete idea of the consequences in 18 years’ time.
After last year’s coal crisis, climate change strikes this year and affects the power supply in some Chinese provinces. Factories are at a standstill, crops are at risk, and tens of millions of people are suffering under heat that can last for weeks (China.Table reported). Beijing leaders are facing one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century: How to reduce the massive carbon emissions of the Chinese economy without jeopardizing economic growth and jobs.
The lfW event “Green Growth: What can we expect from China?” explored this question. It quickly became clear what a dilemma the government is in: China must reconcile growth with environmental and climate protection. If growth is curbed too much, social divisions will threaten the rule of the CP. If too much carbon dioxide continues to be blown into the air, the climate will heat up even more. Extreme weather such as heat waves, floods and droughts would deprive China of its livelihoods. Harvests would be endangered and protests could be expected because the government failed to protect the people from disaster.
This poses a challenge for the People’s Republic to quickly decouple growth from carbon emissions, says Sebastian Eckardt, an economist at the World Bank. No country in history has had to transform its economy as quickly as China must now. Continued consumption of coal and other fossil fuels would plunge the world into climate chaos.
Eckardt sees two major problems here. First, he says, it is still difficult to reduce emissions in some industrial sectors – especially cement, iron and steel. According to Eckhardt, the necessary low-carbon production technologies are simply not yet available. Which has all the more impact on the climate because China’s industrial sector emits far more than either the US or the EU. Here, China could benefit from the fact that demand for construction raw materials will fall in the coming years, according to the World Bank expert. Other analysts assume that a lot of carbon dioxide can be saved in the next few years through scrap metal recycling (China.Table reported).
A second pressing problem is the social issue of decarbonization. According to various estimates, up to five million people work in coal production. The construction sector employs between 54 and 60 million people (China.Table reported). Should these jobs disappear, China’s social stability could be shaken. This is because, according to World Bank economist Eckardt, a switch to clean energy would primarily hurt unskilled, male workers. Getting these workers into new jobs poses immense challenges for the government. Regional inequality could rise sharply. After all, the necessary social systems to cushion unemployment are still lacking.
But how does China plan to cut its emissions? By 2030, the country will focus primarily on improving energy efficiency, says Xiliang Zhang, the Director of the Institute of Energy, Environment and Economics at Tsinghua University. By building more modern production facilities while simultaneously shutting down older coal-fired power plants, emissions are expected to be reduced. In the period between 2030 and 2050, replacing fossil fuels with renewables will have a major impact on China’s decarbonization. According to analysts, this is also urgently needed. To achieve the climate targets and eliminate coal-fired power from the energy mix, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar will have to be expanded even faster.
According to Zhang, China will also rely more heavily on carbon capture technologies from 2036. Processes such as cement production, in which carbon emissions have so far been difficult to prevent, are thus set to become carbon-neutral. In the last 10 years before the goal of carbon neutrality is reached (by 2060), carbon capture technologies are expected to contribute as much as 70 percent to reducing emissions. However, the process of direct air capture, the direct extraction of carbon dioxide from the air, is not expected to be widely utilized until 2060. At present, much of this is still a long way off, as investment in carbon capture technologies is still very low, even in China (China.Table reported).
China is now responsible for a good 30 percent of annual global carbon emissions. Per capita emissions in the People’s Republic are now at a similar level as in Germany. If the global community wants to achieve its climate targets, China has to make a significant contribution. This is also in Beijing’s interest. After all, climate change has long since become part of people’s everyday lives – this year, they are suffering under extreme temperatures of over 40 degrees in some places. Last year, torrential rain caused widespread flooding. In a system like China’s, the state is held even more responsible for these extremes than in the West. Climate change is therefore also likely to become one of the top priorities of the Chinese Communist Party in the years to come.
The Yangtze River (Yangzi) is carrying less and less water due to the long drought (China.Table reported). The level in the region’s reservoirs also drops to historic lows. Large amounts of hydropower are usually produced at the dams. As a result, electrical power is becoming scarce in the major metropolis of Chongqing. Shopping malls in Chongqing now have to close for several hours a day to save power.
Factories in the neighboring province of Sichuan have to shut down for the same reason. Important sectors such as manufacturers of semiconductors, solar cells and car parts are also affected. Tesla in Shanghai has already had to cut production due to missing supplies from Sichuan. The province normally meets 80 percent of its electricity needs from hydropower.
Chongqing currently offers an unusual sight. Like the Rhine in Germany, the mighty Yangtze River has shrunk to the width of a stream. The city is taking the opportunity to freshly paint bridge piers all the way to the bottom. Children play between the stones in the dry riverbed and catch crabs.
The power fluctuations can also be seen far downriver in Shanghai. The illumination spectacle on the Bund is taking a break for a few days to save power. This is part of a city plan to conserve energy. The plan envisions the following mechanism: In the event of a supply shortfall of more than six million kilowatt-hours, the city must ensure a load reduction of 800,000 kilowatts. It must notify all affected electricity customers in a timely manner. fin
Six high-ranking employees of the defunct Hong Kong daily Apple Daily accept charges of conspiring with foreign forces based on the National Security Law. Only its founder, renowned government critic Jimmy Lai, pleaded not guilty at a public hearing in the city’s High Court on Monday. Prosecutors accuse the seven journalists of openly inciting foreign countries to take sanctions and hostile measures against Hong Kong on July 1, 2020, a day after the security law was introduced.
Media entrepreneur Lai (74) is currently already serving a 13-month prison sentence for attending a memorial service to mark the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. Should he now also be found guilty of the alleged violation of the National Security Law, despite his plea, he faces up to ten years in prison. His trial will be held separately from that of his six ex-colleagues, the prosecution announced.
The six employees are editor-in-chief Ryan Law, managing editor Lam Man-chung, publisher Cheung Kim-hung, publishing partner Chan Pui-man, and columnists Fung Wai-kong and Yeung Ching-kee. All seven are still under parallel investigation under the Colonial Sedition Act.
Authorities accuse them of conspiracy to have “printed, published, sold, offered for sale, displayed, or reproduced” secessionist publications in 2019. Because the Security Law was not introduced until 2020, prosecutors have unceremoniously revived the Sedition Law. For decades, it had not been applied by the city’s judiciary. The maximum penalty for a first-time conviction is two years in prison and a fine.
The High Court consists of three judges who can be selected by the city’s political leadership through mechanisms for security law violations. Contrary to the usual practice of not holding hearings in public for cases under the Security Law, the judges had allowed the press to attend. grz
The impressions of his first trip to China have left a lasting impression on Nis Gruenberg. Even today, when he thinks back on it, he is overcome with such intense emotion that the half-Dane is left speechless. “Mindblowing,” the lead analyst of the Berlin research institute Merics told China.Table instead: simply overwhelming. That was 18 years ago, and since then it has become clear to Gruenberg that he wanted to dedicate his career to China, which until then he had only known as an abstract idea from his studies – and he has made good on this promise to himself.
With his research on the Chinese Communist Party, its elite politics and, more recently, increasingly on the sustainable and green transition of the Chinese economy, Gruenberg has long been considered one of the foremost China experts in Germany. He regularly gives interviews to leading media on Chinese politics and the changes the country is undergoing.
They are theoretical questions that Gruenberg would never have thought at the beginning of his studies would one day be a concern for him. In 2003, he began a master’s degree in anthropology at the Free University of Berlin and, rather by chance, came across the People’s Republic in a study catalog. He chooses Chinese studies as his major and begins learning Mandarin. “It suited me,” he quickly discovered. He later went to Copenhagen, and studied Chinese studies, first for a bachelor’s degree and then for a master’s. He then went on to earn a Ph.D.
When he was drawn to the country for the first time in 2004, the idea of China as a future economic power already existed in Germany. But a tangible idea of what the country itself, and also the world, would look like with a powerful People’s Republic was not yet floating around. Only slowly did it become clear what it would mean when a country of this size awakens economically. What kind of consequences this would have for our planet, for example.
The question that currently drives Gruenberg deals with precisely these dimensions: Can China make the energy transition sustainable and efficient? The answer is still open. China does have the advantage of being able to direct resources in one direction very quickly, Gruenberg observes. However, no one can yet predict whether it will be able to achieve the associated cultural change and thus the entire transition to renewable energies.
But Gruenberg’s true passion, as he says, still lies not in the theoretical, but the “exploration of the distant paradise”. Whenever his studies allowed, he would hop on a plane or train to the Far East and travel across the country. As a tour guide, he led Danish tourists through China, securing a visa and free transportation. “I spent most of my twenties in China, even though I never fully moved there,” he recalls. He particularly enjoyed southern China, especially the province of Yunnan.
It is understandable that nothing now pains the 40-year-old more than the strict entry requirements into the country. “The human dimension is completely missing,” he says. ” Here, the very understanding between China and the rest of the world is being lost, the personal and the nuances. This is highly dangerous for mutual cooperation,” he is convinced. Especially since his experiences no longer keep pace with current developments and urgently need to be refreshed. “Back then, I got to know a China that no longer exists today and that students who once studied for six months at an elite university in Shanghai will never get to know,” says Gruenberg.
Because as good as open-source data is for analyzing economic development today, it still cannot replace the human component – the exchange and the question: What really concerns people? Since the beginning of the pandemic, it has been impossible to find out all this. If it were up to Gruenberg, he would immediately get on a plane and tour rural China once again. But for that to happen, the country has to open up. Will that happen again? “I hope so,” Gruenberg says. Nils Wischmeyer
Harvest time for the fruits of the Chinese berry grape (Schisandra chinensis): The medicinal plant, which is harvested in summer, provides ingredients for the production of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The Chinese government has been promoting the marketing of TCM products for several years. The desired side effect is an economic stimulus for rural regions of the country.
In today’s Profile, Merics researcher Nis Gruenberg talks about a vision from 2004 of what the future might look like if China was an economic power – an abstract idea at the time. 18 years later, that vision is now taking shape. Politically, however, increasingly sharp lines of conflict are emerging in the wake of China’s growing significance. These have the potential to tear open wounds that could destroy global peace.
And yet, governments are doomed to work closely together in this constellation. Namely, when it comes to the fight against global warming. If the climate tips over the critical threshold, there will only be losers anyway. However, countries wait and see what price the others are willing to pay in the form of declining economic growth.
In China, this tactic has a special dimension because the government has to reconcile growth with environmental and climate protection more urgently than in other countries, as Nico Beckert reports. If growth is curbed too much, social divisions threaten the rule of the CP. If too much carbon continues to be blown into the air, the climate will heat up even more. Extreme weather such as heat waves, floods and droughts would deprive China of its livelihoods. Harvests would be endangered and protests could be expected because the government failed to protect the people from disaster.
The recent past has already shown that political stability takes precedence over climate protection in China. What this means for the world is only an abstract idea today. But we will probably have a much more concrete idea of the consequences in 18 years’ time.
After last year’s coal crisis, climate change strikes this year and affects the power supply in some Chinese provinces. Factories are at a standstill, crops are at risk, and tens of millions of people are suffering under heat that can last for weeks (China.Table reported). Beijing leaders are facing one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century: How to reduce the massive carbon emissions of the Chinese economy without jeopardizing economic growth and jobs.
The lfW event “Green Growth: What can we expect from China?” explored this question. It quickly became clear what a dilemma the government is in: China must reconcile growth with environmental and climate protection. If growth is curbed too much, social divisions will threaten the rule of the CP. If too much carbon dioxide continues to be blown into the air, the climate will heat up even more. Extreme weather such as heat waves, floods and droughts would deprive China of its livelihoods. Harvests would be endangered and protests could be expected because the government failed to protect the people from disaster.
This poses a challenge for the People’s Republic to quickly decouple growth from carbon emissions, says Sebastian Eckardt, an economist at the World Bank. No country in history has had to transform its economy as quickly as China must now. Continued consumption of coal and other fossil fuels would plunge the world into climate chaos.
Eckardt sees two major problems here. First, he says, it is still difficult to reduce emissions in some industrial sectors – especially cement, iron and steel. According to Eckhardt, the necessary low-carbon production technologies are simply not yet available. Which has all the more impact on the climate because China’s industrial sector emits far more than either the US or the EU. Here, China could benefit from the fact that demand for construction raw materials will fall in the coming years, according to the World Bank expert. Other analysts assume that a lot of carbon dioxide can be saved in the next few years through scrap metal recycling (China.Table reported).
A second pressing problem is the social issue of decarbonization. According to various estimates, up to five million people work in coal production. The construction sector employs between 54 and 60 million people (China.Table reported). Should these jobs disappear, China’s social stability could be shaken. This is because, according to World Bank economist Eckardt, a switch to clean energy would primarily hurt unskilled, male workers. Getting these workers into new jobs poses immense challenges for the government. Regional inequality could rise sharply. After all, the necessary social systems to cushion unemployment are still lacking.
But how does China plan to cut its emissions? By 2030, the country will focus primarily on improving energy efficiency, says Xiliang Zhang, the Director of the Institute of Energy, Environment and Economics at Tsinghua University. By building more modern production facilities while simultaneously shutting down older coal-fired power plants, emissions are expected to be reduced. In the period between 2030 and 2050, replacing fossil fuels with renewables will have a major impact on China’s decarbonization. According to analysts, this is also urgently needed. To achieve the climate targets and eliminate coal-fired power from the energy mix, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar will have to be expanded even faster.
According to Zhang, China will also rely more heavily on carbon capture technologies from 2036. Processes such as cement production, in which carbon emissions have so far been difficult to prevent, are thus set to become carbon-neutral. In the last 10 years before the goal of carbon neutrality is reached (by 2060), carbon capture technologies are expected to contribute as much as 70 percent to reducing emissions. However, the process of direct air capture, the direct extraction of carbon dioxide from the air, is not expected to be widely utilized until 2060. At present, much of this is still a long way off, as investment in carbon capture technologies is still very low, even in China (China.Table reported).
China is now responsible for a good 30 percent of annual global carbon emissions. Per capita emissions in the People’s Republic are now at a similar level as in Germany. If the global community wants to achieve its climate targets, China has to make a significant contribution. This is also in Beijing’s interest. After all, climate change has long since become part of people’s everyday lives – this year, they are suffering under extreme temperatures of over 40 degrees in some places. Last year, torrential rain caused widespread flooding. In a system like China’s, the state is held even more responsible for these extremes than in the West. Climate change is therefore also likely to become one of the top priorities of the Chinese Communist Party in the years to come.
The Yangtze River (Yangzi) is carrying less and less water due to the long drought (China.Table reported). The level in the region’s reservoirs also drops to historic lows. Large amounts of hydropower are usually produced at the dams. As a result, electrical power is becoming scarce in the major metropolis of Chongqing. Shopping malls in Chongqing now have to close for several hours a day to save power.
Factories in the neighboring province of Sichuan have to shut down for the same reason. Important sectors such as manufacturers of semiconductors, solar cells and car parts are also affected. Tesla in Shanghai has already had to cut production due to missing supplies from Sichuan. The province normally meets 80 percent of its electricity needs from hydropower.
Chongqing currently offers an unusual sight. Like the Rhine in Germany, the mighty Yangtze River has shrunk to the width of a stream. The city is taking the opportunity to freshly paint bridge piers all the way to the bottom. Children play between the stones in the dry riverbed and catch crabs.
The power fluctuations can also be seen far downriver in Shanghai. The illumination spectacle on the Bund is taking a break for a few days to save power. This is part of a city plan to conserve energy. The plan envisions the following mechanism: In the event of a supply shortfall of more than six million kilowatt-hours, the city must ensure a load reduction of 800,000 kilowatts. It must notify all affected electricity customers in a timely manner. fin
Six high-ranking employees of the defunct Hong Kong daily Apple Daily accept charges of conspiring with foreign forces based on the National Security Law. Only its founder, renowned government critic Jimmy Lai, pleaded not guilty at a public hearing in the city’s High Court on Monday. Prosecutors accuse the seven journalists of openly inciting foreign countries to take sanctions and hostile measures against Hong Kong on July 1, 2020, a day after the security law was introduced.
Media entrepreneur Lai (74) is currently already serving a 13-month prison sentence for attending a memorial service to mark the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. Should he now also be found guilty of the alleged violation of the National Security Law, despite his plea, he faces up to ten years in prison. His trial will be held separately from that of his six ex-colleagues, the prosecution announced.
The six employees are editor-in-chief Ryan Law, managing editor Lam Man-chung, publisher Cheung Kim-hung, publishing partner Chan Pui-man, and columnists Fung Wai-kong and Yeung Ching-kee. All seven are still under parallel investigation under the Colonial Sedition Act.
Authorities accuse them of conspiracy to have “printed, published, sold, offered for sale, displayed, or reproduced” secessionist publications in 2019. Because the Security Law was not introduced until 2020, prosecutors have unceremoniously revived the Sedition Law. For decades, it had not been applied by the city’s judiciary. The maximum penalty for a first-time conviction is two years in prison and a fine.
The High Court consists of three judges who can be selected by the city’s political leadership through mechanisms for security law violations. Contrary to the usual practice of not holding hearings in public for cases under the Security Law, the judges had allowed the press to attend. grz
The impressions of his first trip to China have left a lasting impression on Nis Gruenberg. Even today, when he thinks back on it, he is overcome with such intense emotion that the half-Dane is left speechless. “Mindblowing,” the lead analyst of the Berlin research institute Merics told China.Table instead: simply overwhelming. That was 18 years ago, and since then it has become clear to Gruenberg that he wanted to dedicate his career to China, which until then he had only known as an abstract idea from his studies – and he has made good on this promise to himself.
With his research on the Chinese Communist Party, its elite politics and, more recently, increasingly on the sustainable and green transition of the Chinese economy, Gruenberg has long been considered one of the foremost China experts in Germany. He regularly gives interviews to leading media on Chinese politics and the changes the country is undergoing.
They are theoretical questions that Gruenberg would never have thought at the beginning of his studies would one day be a concern for him. In 2003, he began a master’s degree in anthropology at the Free University of Berlin and, rather by chance, came across the People’s Republic in a study catalog. He chooses Chinese studies as his major and begins learning Mandarin. “It suited me,” he quickly discovered. He later went to Copenhagen, and studied Chinese studies, first for a bachelor’s degree and then for a master’s. He then went on to earn a Ph.D.
When he was drawn to the country for the first time in 2004, the idea of China as a future economic power already existed in Germany. But a tangible idea of what the country itself, and also the world, would look like with a powerful People’s Republic was not yet floating around. Only slowly did it become clear what it would mean when a country of this size awakens economically. What kind of consequences this would have for our planet, for example.
The question that currently drives Gruenberg deals with precisely these dimensions: Can China make the energy transition sustainable and efficient? The answer is still open. China does have the advantage of being able to direct resources in one direction very quickly, Gruenberg observes. However, no one can yet predict whether it will be able to achieve the associated cultural change and thus the entire transition to renewable energies.
But Gruenberg’s true passion, as he says, still lies not in the theoretical, but the “exploration of the distant paradise”. Whenever his studies allowed, he would hop on a plane or train to the Far East and travel across the country. As a tour guide, he led Danish tourists through China, securing a visa and free transportation. “I spent most of my twenties in China, even though I never fully moved there,” he recalls. He particularly enjoyed southern China, especially the province of Yunnan.
It is understandable that nothing now pains the 40-year-old more than the strict entry requirements into the country. “The human dimension is completely missing,” he says. ” Here, the very understanding between China and the rest of the world is being lost, the personal and the nuances. This is highly dangerous for mutual cooperation,” he is convinced. Especially since his experiences no longer keep pace with current developments and urgently need to be refreshed. “Back then, I got to know a China that no longer exists today and that students who once studied for six months at an elite university in Shanghai will never get to know,” says Gruenberg.
Because as good as open-source data is for analyzing economic development today, it still cannot replace the human component – the exchange and the question: What really concerns people? Since the beginning of the pandemic, it has been impossible to find out all this. If it were up to Gruenberg, he would immediately get on a plane and tour rural China once again. But for that to happen, the country has to open up. Will that happen again? “I hope so,” Gruenberg says. Nils Wischmeyer
Harvest time for the fruits of the Chinese berry grape (Schisandra chinensis): The medicinal plant, which is harvested in summer, provides ingredients for the production of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The Chinese government has been promoting the marketing of TCM products for several years. The desired side effect is an economic stimulus for rural regions of the country.
